The Shadows Inside Me
by Unstoppable Cyborg
Summary: When your beloved is struggling with supernatural changes, you need to help them as best you can. Written for Day Two of Jlaire week on Tumblr; takes place after Season Three.


**This was originally for day 2 of jlaireweek, but I'm a day late.**

 **I don't own _Trollhunters_.**

Jim had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since they had left Arcadia. Specifically, he was waiting for Claire to realize that she deserved better than what he could offer her. The fact that he found her just past where the sunlight hit the shadows only felt like proof of that. If his time in the Darklands was any indicator, it wasn't healthy for humans to live without sunshine. The same UV light that would now kill him was what would keep her healthy. Living underground wouldn't.

"I saved some of the meat before the others could eat it and I figured you might be getting hungry. Mind coming in so you can tell me if it tastes right?" While his guesses were still mostly accurate, he no longer could be sure what she or any other human would think would taste good.

"Sure, just, just give me a second," she said, voice hoarse and wavering, like she was on the edge of tears.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fi-" she began to say, looking up at him and revealing that she was _not_ fine. She flinched as he gasped. He thought he saw regret in her eyes as she stood up and ran further into the sunlight. It was hard to tell, however, when her eyes were purple with black sclera.

"Claire, _wait!_ " he called after her, reaching out only to pull back as the daylight burning into his hand became unbearable. Jim turned and retreated into the shadows. He needed hep if he was to find her.

Jim found Blinky in the further recesses of the cave assessing their supplies. The leader of the remains of Trollmarket turned to him.

"Master Jim, your hand!" he said, looking at his son with concern; another iteration of the "no matter how much you may miss the sun you need to look after your health" lecture brewing in his eyes.

Rather than wait for Blinky to speak while he gathered his breath and thoughts, Jim spoke. "Claire, her eyes, they, I don't-"

"What happened to her? Has she been blinded?"

"No, or, at least, I don't think so. Just, remember when we were evacuating Trollmarket and she made that giant portal?" _The one we begged her not to make because we thought it might kill her?_ "They looked like eyes did then, though she didn't have the cracks. At least, not on her face. I didn't look to see if they were on her hands."Blinky barely managed to avoid dropping the bag of socks he had been organizing. "I see. And where is she now?"

Jim glanced at his injured hand.

Blinky glanced around before lowering his voice. "Master Jim, did she seem... _herself_ "

"What? She didn't try to attack me, Blinky, I was trying to reach after her when she ran away. Not to mention she still had a shadow. Besides, she'd _tell_ us if she thought something was wrong."

"While I'd certainly hope that she would, the two of you are quite similar in that aspect. You don't want to 'burden' those you care about with your problems, even if you would greatly benefit from a helping hand. You'd much rather go where we can't follow, even if it's somewhere as simple as the sun when the day only started a couple hours ago. I hope Notenrique and Nomura return soon from their excursion to that old Janus Order base. It's not like we can call humans for umbrellas this time."

Jim glanced at Claire's abandoned backpack. "Maybe we won't need to."

Blinky sighed. "Alright, but do be careful. And once the two of you are safely back in this cave you are to get your hand treated."

"You've been talking to my mom way too much," Jim grumbled as he began to search through his girlfriend's backpack.

Twenty minutes of following her scent and footprints later, Jim found Claire sitting with her knees held close to her chest. She wasn't actually that far from the cave, but walking carefully crouched under a rain poncho didn't make for easy travel.

"Claire?" She looked up towards him; her eyes were still black and purple. Tears glistened on the black cracks that had grown in under her eyes.

"The sun - what are you doing here?" Her voice was choked and panicked.

"Looking for you. There's some shade over there, do you want to move to it?"

She made a move to speak, but nodded instead as she sniffled back her tears.

"I'm _not_ her. Morgana. And I don't want to _be_ her," Claire said once the two of them were sitting in the shade.

Jim spoke, trying to ignore the splintering noises coming from her shaking hands. "Claire, I don't think anything could make you into another Morgana."

"Then why is this happening? We sealed her away, why else would she be invading my body again if not to make me into her minion?"

Jim reached out with his four-fingered hand to turn her face so he could look into her eyes, but she noticed the burns on his hand instead.

 _"Jim,_ your _hand,"_ she said. The rate at which the cracks spread increased as her hands began to shake. "You got _hurt_ because of _me."_

"It's really not as bad as it looks. I think my skin color just makes it look bad, but it heals more like a sunburn."

"But if I hadn't run away -"

"You're scared. I get it." He took one of her hands into his own and traced over the cracks with his thumb. While they weren't as deep as they looked, there were definitely noticeable grooves as opposed to simple tattoo-like markings, like the carvings found in a troll's skin.

Her fingers gripped around his, trembling like he was her lifeline.

"What if I get possessed again? We don't have the staff anymore, it's not like you can break me out of the Shadow Realm."

Jim stopped tracing the cracks. "Claire, we don't know if that'll happen."

"But it _could_ "

"And we'll just find a way to break in there and break you out, just like you guys did when I was in the Darklands. Besides, you were able to overpower her before. Now that Merlin has the magic that she stole back, I have no doubt you'd be able to do it again."

"The thing is, when both of us were in the Shadow Realm, she was _so much stronger._ And the thing is, I think I was able to take some of it's power into me as well. She might be gathering power from there right now, and I'm the _perfect_ conduit for her!" Her shout broke off into a sob.

"That sickness I had after I made the portal? I think it changed me," Claire whispered. "I don't want to be a monster." And there it was, the mantra that Jim had been repeating to himself for, for how long? Since he had lost his humanity? Since that day when he had learned of Grave Sand? Since he had crawled out of the Deep? Since he had learned the second rule of being the Trollhunter?

It had already become an obssession for him. He didn't want it to eat away at Claire as well.

Jim wrapped his arms around her. "Whatever you are, whatever you might become, I love you."

"Now you're just parroting my words back at me."

"What can I say? They're good words, and maybe you need to be reminded that the feeling is mutual." She gave a shaking laugh into his chest as Jim stroked her hair.

"I guess you're right," she said before continuing to sob.

Jim waited for her to stop crying before he spoke up. "How did all of this start?"

"With me opening a giant portal in the gyre station and instead of dying I got my soul bonded to Morgana. Or maybe earlier, when I decided that instead of listening to someone who knew more about dark magic than I did I'd just _keep_ the staff that I stole from an assassin who had been trying to _kill_ us."

"Er, I meant by how did it start today."

"I don't know, just that I got out my phone to call my parents and I saw that my eyes look like _this_." She pulled away from him to look into his eyes as if to demonstrate her point. The cracks were still growing, but they were slower now.

"Has anything weird happened in the past couple days that might be related to all of this?"

Her eyes narrowed, the cracks rippling with her skin. "Merlin tried to teach me magic."

The sound of cracks growing across Claire's body stopped.

"Do you think he has anything to do with this?" she asked.

As much as he wanted to pin all the blame on the wizard, Jim wasn't sure. "Maybe, or maybe your body doesn't know how to handle magic, and it's trying to do the equivalent of sweating out a fever. I don't know; I never learned about this sort of stuff." He wiped away the tears from under her eyes and smiled at her. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw some of the anguish leave her eyes. He had loved their brown, but he could learn to love black-and-purple as well.

"Thanks for coming after me and everything," Claire said. "Let's go back to the cave before the sun gets any higher; you still need to put the troll-equivalent of aloe vera on your hand."


End file.
